By: Farhat Afzal

Over the past three centuries, the Revere house has been occupied by a variety of people from various social classes. A museum since 1908, it is one of the earliest house museums in the country, but the version of the home that visitors see today does not perfectly reflect any single period that it was lived in. Following the house’s construction in around 1680, the first resident was a wealthy merchant named Robert Howard. Howard lived in the house for thirty-six years until his death, when his daughter Sarah inherited it.[1] Two other families owned and lived in the house in the 18th century before Paul Revere owned the house between 1770 and 1800. In the 19th century the various owners rented rooms to boarders, and the first floor had a variety of retail uses.[2] Since its restoration in 1907-08, the Revere house has faced criticism for what some perceive as historical inaccuracy in its architectural features. Boston-based American historian Walter Muir Whitehall once said, “Paul Revere, were he to return to North Square, would not recognize it as the house in which he long lived.”[3]

The Paul Revere House in the late 1800s, prior to the restoration.

The Paul Revere House and its neighbors today.

In 1902, the Revere house was purchased by Paul Revere’s great-grandson, John Phillips Reynolds, Jr., who swiftly gathered some notable Boston citizens to help raise funds to restore the house. By this point, the North End was very much an immigrant neighborhood. Many of the donors to the newly formed Paul Revere Memorial Association (PRMA) were from Anglo-American families who had been in New England for generations, and were motivated by their belief that preserving the home of a Patriot from the American Revolution would uplift the neighborhood.[4]

In 1905, the PRMA commissioned MIT-trained architect Joseph Everett Chandler to oversee restoration efforts. What made the restoration process challenging is the fact that the house was already ninety years old when the Reveres moved in. The house had also been much altered in the years since the Reveres sold it. Chandler wanted to retain or recreate some 1680s architectural features, but many patrons who supported the restoration expected the process to reflect Revere’s time period.[5] The resulting restoration and interpretation was effectively a compromise. The front exterior of the house was restored to the 17th century as much as was possible, lowering the roof back to its original steepness, adding windows that re-created the 17th century windows, and adding a replica of a 1680’s fireplace on the first floor (the original fireplace is actually in the basement and not accessible to visitors). Chandler did restore the first-floor kitchen at the back of the house and the second-floor bedrooms to the 18th century.[6] The museum was furnished for the period of the Reveres’ occupancy between 1770 and 1800.

The front room on the first floor, what 17th and 18th century residents probably called the hall.
Since the 1980s, this room has been arranged to show the 17th century.

The main bedroom, which the Reveres likely called the best chamber, restored to the late 18th century.

The public understanding of the restoration was not so nuanced. An article in the Boston Sunday Globe published after the museum’s opening in 1908 says the PRMA spent several months “to make the old building just as it was at the time of Revere.”[7] In addition to ignoring the fact that the restoration combined two time periods, the article compressed the time frame; the restoration took over a year.[8]

Chandler’s early training as an architect gives insight into why he chose to restore the Revere house the way he did. The architecture program at MIT followed the curriculum practiced at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and other institutions in Europe, which gave the students a strong foundation in European architecture history. The Revere House was an example of post-medieval architecture (which historically was also called First Period), influenced by medieval European styles.[9]

Chandler was one of the earliest American professionals in the field of historic preservation, which meant that there were few precedents in the discipline. He was one of the pioneers who strongly advocated preservation of buildings for the sake of their architectural merit. In Europe, preservation of medieval monuments had been taking place for at least half a century. Chandler admired the French architect, preservationist, and theorist Eugène Viollet le-Duc, who argued that restoration meant “to reestablish [a building] in a complete state” which may not reflect any single time period. Perhaps Chandler had this idea in mind when he approached restoring the Revere house.[10]

Architectural historians have had mixed opinions of the restoration of the Revere House. Up until the mid-20th century, the Revere House seemed to be entirely absent from architectural history books. Since then, some have praised the preservation of its 17th century elements and others have been dismissive and compared it unfavorably to other preserved homes from the period.[11]

The fiercest critic of Chandler’s restoration was architect Charles Strickland. Charles had restored the 1711 Pierce-Hichborn house next door in 1949, and worked with his father, also an architect, to repair the Paul Revere House between 1949 and 1950. In 1958, Strickland strongly advocated for destroying Chandler’s restoration work entirely and undertaking a complete reconstruction of the Revere House. However, there is some reason to believe that Strickland’s position was one of professional rivalry with the late Chandler (who died in 1945) rather than unbiased scholarly disagreement.[12]

In 1961, the PRMA did make some architectural changes, but not those recommended by Strickland. The Association opted for some of the “subtle editing techniques” recommended by another New England architectural historian, Abbott Lowell Cummings.[13] Cummings would later write a landmark book on colonial architecture, The Colonial Houses of Massachusetts Bay. This book, first published in 1979, positioned the Revere house within the context of other colonial architecture of that time.[14] This was possible due to a thorough evaluation of the physical evidence discovered by Chandler during the restoration work on the Revere house. Chandler had set important precedents in the field of house preservation – such as establishing the foundation of restoration work on the basis of knowledge on colonial architecture, observing buildings to identify signs of physical changes, using examples found in other houses of the same time period, and maintaining as much of the original materials as possible.[15] His attention to these concerns continued to support the preservation of the house as he envisioned it, long after his death. Despite the criticisms and controversies, Chandler may have been the ideal candidate to undertake the restoration process.

While there is much truth in Whitehall’s remark about Paul Revere not recognizing his house in its current state, I believe it is also true that were he to return to North Square, Revere would have been proud to see his old house preserved and serving as a place for educating people about both American history and his own life. As a Patriot, he would have appreciated his legacy being celebrated in the home he owned for thirty years and where he lived at the time of his famous midnight ride.

Farhat Afzal is a graduate student pursuing a PhD in Architecture at the University of Cincinnati. She worked as an intern at the Paul Revere House in summer 2024.

[1] Stephen J. Roper, “The Early History of the Paul Revere House.” In Architecture in Colonial Massachusetts: A Conference held by Colonial Society of Massachusetts, September 1974. (The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1979), 8.

[2] Laura B. Driemeyer, Paul Revere Memorial Association Boardinghouse Research Report (May 2007), unpublished research report on file in the Paul Revere Memorial Association library, 4.

[3] Michael Holleran, Boston’s “Changeful Times”: Origins of Preservation and Planning in America. (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 218.

[4] Sarah A. Arnold, “Recreating Revere: The Restoration and Interpretation of the Paul Revere House,” Independent Work for Distinction, Boston University, April 2005, 19.

[5] Arnold, “Recreating Revere,” 24.

[6] Derek Manning, “Joseph Everett Chandler: A Window to the Past/A Mirror to the Present.” The Revere House Gazette. Spring 2007, p 4, 6.

[7] “Paul Revere House Opened: Old Building Restored to Original Form.” Boston Sunday Globe. April 1908.

[8] Manning, “Joseph Everett Chandler,” 1.

[9] Arnold, “Recreating Revere,” 24.

[10] Arnold, “Recreating Revere,” 24; Manning, “Joseph Everett Chandler,” 1.

[11] Hugh Morrison, Early American Architecture, from the First Colonial Settlements to the National Period (Oxford University Press, 1962), 61; Henry-Russell Hitchcock, A Guide to Boston Architecture 1637-1954 (Reinhold Publishing, 1954); Timothy T. Orwig, “Joseph Everett Chandler, Colonial Revival Architecture and the Origins of Historic Preservation in New England.” (Boston University, 2010), 365-66.

[12] Orwig, “Joseph Everett Chandler,” 366.

[13] Orwig, “Joseph Everett Chandler,” 367.

[14] Abbott Lowell Cummings, The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay, 1625-1725. (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979).

[15] Manning, “Joseph Everett Chandler,” 4.